Arizona's New Record Sealing Law Shouldn’t Stop Us from Tracking Evictions

Yuliya Panfil and Sabiha Zainulbhai wrote an OpEd for the Arizona Republic, arguing that housing advocates and aid organizations need continued access to eviction data in order to effectively direct rental aid and keep tenants housed.

House Bill 2485, signed by Gov. Doug Ducey, is intended to protect tenants by sealing records of evictions that are dismissed or decided in favor of the tenant.

Eviction filing data is regularly sold to tenant screening companies, who repackage it for landlords to use in making rental decisions. That means a “Scarlet E” on a tenant screening report is enough to threaten a tenant’s ability to find housing for years to come, even if a prior eviction filing is ultimately dismissed.

Indeed, of the 80,000 evictions filed each year across the state, the advocacy organization Wildfire found that 30% are ultimately dismissed, meaning that this law could protect tens of thousands of families each year.

But if the law isn’t implemented carefully, it could threaten access to the very data that legal aid organizations, rent assistance providers and others in the housing community have come to rely on in their everyday work.

So, what happens when the same data that has the potential to harm a tenant’s future housing options is also critical to efforts to keep people safely housed? Arizona public officials are already weighing how to honor HB 2485’s intent of protecting tenants while preserving access to that data for the public benefit.

Read here on how Arizona can strike a balance between tenant protection and access to eviction data.